1. Listen, Read, Compare and Think, Act, Say A Prayer! Look, listen and take action if you see or hear anything suspicious. It’s been 14 years since the U.S. was attacked.
You can make a difference, by doing something small such as reporting suspicious behavior. Listen to conversations nearby, read as much as you can that is national and international in nature to learn tolerance and when to take action. And please make your decision based on what you know, not what you are being told.
Celebrate September 11 as a day we can all live in freedom without sucomming to the cowards who hide in the shadows. Be like Todd Beamer, be strong and positive, and proclaim a positive as Todd did, “Let’s Roll!”
2. Tri-State Seminar. ri-State Seminar.
Upcoming Seminar Dates
September 22-24, 2015 -September 20-22, 2016
September 26-28, 2017 September 25-27, 2018
The Tri-State Training Council and I would like to welcome you to the 2015 Tri-State Seminar being held September 22nd through the 24th at the South Point Hotel / Conference Center.
By the comments the Tri-State Training Council has received moving the Tristate Seminar to South Point Hotel / Conference Center moving the Tristate Seminar to South Point Hotel / Conference Center has been a win win for all those involved. This year’s Seminar will hold many new and exciting things for all Attendees, Exhibitors and your family members.
Take a look at the great program and special tours we have available at http://www.tristateseminar.com/
3. Amateur Paleontologist Finds Jaw Bone Of Fish Thought To Be Extinct In North America At Time. Safe to say, Stephanie Leco hit a paleontology jackpot this summer with the discovery of a jaw bone from a long-snouted fish at Petrified Forest known to exist more than 220 million years ago.
Leco was part of the first dig for citizens held last month at the national park near Holbrook that routinely turns up fossils from the dawning age of dinosaurs and has vast expanses of rainbow-colored desert.
The fossil about the size of a pinky fingernail was unearthed from the site of what was a lake or pond during the Late Triassic period when the fish were thought to be extinct in North America. Scientists knew closely related fish were present around the world in the Early Triassic period, about 10 million years earlier, but the fossils were found only in China in the Late Triassic, said park paleontologist Bill Parker.
Leco was sifting through loose dirt on a barren hillside using her background in art to differentiate the colors, patterns and textures among bones, rocks and charcoal when she zoomed in on an area looking for smaller objects. She already had several small teeth in her collection and was marveling at the tibia of a plant lizard that another participant found before coming across the jaw bone. Not knowing what it was, she handed over the fossil that had broken teeth to Matt Smith, the park’s lead fossil preparer, and asked what it was.“I don’t know, that’s why it’s cool,” he responded.
They wrapped up the jaw bone, placed it in a tin and took it to the lab, looking at it more closely under a microscope, she said. The park later emailed her to say it was a fish closely related to the genus Saurichthys.
Leco, 26, said she’s since developed an even deeper fascination with paleontology and bought a couple of books on the Triassic period so that she can speak with authority about her find. The period, which started about 250 million years ago and lasted 50 million years, followed the largest extinction of life on Earth when the land mass was a single continent and had the first dinosaurs.
The full jaw of the fish would be about three to four times longer than the fossil Leco discovered, Parker said. He said other fossils of the fish might also be found on the East Coast and on the Colorado Plateau where similar rock is exposed.
Ben Kligman, a senior at the University of California, Berkley, has been studying the pond site preserved in a six-inch layer of rock. He plans to return to Petrified Forest next summer to look for a full fossil of the fish to determine whether or not it’s a new species. What he didn’t know before Leco found the jaw bone is that he already had smaller pieces of the fish that he couldn’t identify as such, he said.
“Although it’s probably a new species, we can’t say that it is yet because we don’t have enough specimens,” Kligman said. Other citizens participating in the August digs found the vertebrae of a long-necked lizard first uncovered in the park last year and the teeth of a large carnivorous reptile, both considered rare in the park’s fossil record. Their names will accompany the collections at the park, which will use them to reconstruct the habitat of the pond and get a better idea of where the animals fell in the food chain, Parker said. Source: The Associated Press.
4. A Hump In The Road. Get a room people! In a recent study reported in the journal, Accident Analysis and Prevention, a third of college-age men said they engaged in sexual activities while driving.
With acts ranging from masturbation (11% of men, 15% of women) to intercourse, these distracted drivers are a hazard on wheels. What are the dangers that have been reportede? 11% let go of the steering wheel; 38% drive above the speed limit; 36% drifted into another lane; and, 2% say they have nearly had an accident.
How long does a typical erotic rncounter last? Eleven to fifteen minutes when the vehicle is usually going 61 to 80 mph.
Who is having this rolling sex? 33% of the men as the driver and 9% as the passenger. Nine percent of the women are having sex as the driver and 29% as a passenger.
You might want to ask, WHY?
65% of the people say it was for the sake of personal arousal. 58% state it is to satiffy a sexual partner. 41% of the people have sex “for the “love and romance” of it. 31% state it is for the thrill of a romp in sort of a public place, and finally 12% have sex for the privacy and convenience.
Wow! Really? VROOM!!!!!
5. How To Handle Illegal Dumping – When moving time comes, typically around the end of the month and the end of University of Arizona semesters, people occasionally dump their trash where it doesn’t belong. Property owners are responsible for trash cleanup of items dumped on their property and abutting areas. One option is to use the free Brush and Bulky collection, provided twice a year by the City of Tucson’s Environmental Services department. For a small fee, a special trash collection can be ordered any time by calling Customer Service at (520) 791-3171. Of course, usable items can be donated to charity.
Brush and Bulky collection:
http://1.usa.gov/1Fy0Y9g
Environmental Services:
https://1.usa.gov/1rcmU8f
Questions or comments? email: newsnet@tucsonaz.gov
6. Brown Bag Seminar – El Niño 2015-16: Godzilla or Mothra?
Date: Tuesday, September 15, 2015 Time: 12:00 pm – 1:15 pm
Location: WRRC Sol Resnick Conference Room (350 N. Campbell Ave.)
Speaker: Michael A. Crimmins, PhD, Associate Professor & Extension Specialist – Climate Science, Department of Soil, Water, & Environmental Science, University of Arizona
Presentation: El Niño 2015-16: Godzilla or Mothra?
An El Niño has been brewing in the tropical Pacific for well over 18 months now and has just recently gained strength and is expected to persist as a rare strong event through the upcoming winter and spring seasons. Past strong events have brought unusually wet conditions to much of the Southwest and the forecast for Arizona for this winter includes a strong chance of above average precipitation. What will actually happen across Arizona this winter? This presentation will discuss the basics of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, a look at the hydroclimate associated with past strong events and what the forecasts look like for Arizona through next spring.
7. Drought-Stricken Lake Mead Gets Boost From Preservation Program. From top to bottom, the mighty Colorado River is a 1,400-mile journey with 244,000 square miles of river basin that lakes thirst and grows crops for millions of residents in seven states—including 28 Indian tribes along the way.
As one of the most heavily managed rivers in the United States, it is a bell weather for water supply in the Southwest, and it’s in serious trouble.
A drought now in its 16th year (one of the worst droughts in the past 1,200 years, according to the director of the Reclamation Bureau’s Lower Colorado River region), the impacts of continuing climate change, and an increase in demand by a growing population base (already 40 million people) all contribute to the lowering of storage supplies in Lake Mead, which is formed by the river and the Hoover Dam. The river also irrigates more than five million acres of farmland in California’s Imperial Valley and Arizona’s Yuma County.
While healers look for some kind of medical miracle to reestablish the health of the waterway, a project known as the Pilot System Conservation Agreement is underway to stem the continuing loss of water in Lake Mead—at 110 miles long, the largest reservoir on the river. Termed the Leave It in the Lake program, it’s an copy million collaboration between the Bureau of Reclamation, the federal agency that manages the large dams, and big urban water suppliers like the Central Arizona Project (CAP).
In essence, it entails paying farmers, industries, tribes and municipalities to reduce their use of river water. Three states in the Lower Basin (Arizona, California, Nevada) and four in the Upper Basin (Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico) are participating. Lower Basin states have gotten a bit more than $8 million for their efforts, while the Upper Basin folks will receive just under $3 million.
“This partnership demonstrates our commitment to find solutions in meeting future challenges we face in water supply and demand,” said Reclamation’s Regional Director Terry Fulp. “Our goal is to put in place a suite of proactive, voluntary measures that will reduce our risk of reaching critical reservoir levels. Depending on the success of this pilot program, it could be expanded in the future.”
The Central Arizona Project is the most active player to date, initially reducing diversion from Lake Mead by 25,000 acre feet in 2014 and working to achieve as much as 160,000 acre feet in 2015 to help delay the arrival of crisis shortage levels.
“It’s a first step to address the Lower Basin risk,” said CAP Colorado River Program Manager Chuck Cullom.
“All water conserved under this program stays in the river system, helping boost declining reservoir levels and protecting the health of the entire system,” said CAP Board President Pam Pickard.
It’s been a tough battle, and success is not guaranteed. As of July, Mead’s reservoir levels had dipped to the lowest since the Hoover Dam was filled in 1937 and, under current conditions, the odds are high that the lake level will soon drop to a point where federal officials declare an official shortage. Researchers at Scripps Institute of Oceanography are already projecting a 50–50 chance that Lake Mead could continue to diminish in size and drop to what’s known as dead pool, a water level below the dam’s intake level, within the next 20 years.
“What’s unique about this program is its ‘we’re in this together’ approach (where) the fund pays for voluntary reductions in water use by installing efficient irrigation systems, recycling industrial supplies, growing crops that require less water, or even fallowing farm fields,” noted National Geographic.
The latter category, or a combination of those measures, is attractive to some Native American farmers.
Already popular for the last decade in Southern California, the University of Arizona College of Agriculture reports the first farmland fallowing and forbearance project in the Grand Canyon state got started in early 2014 with volunteer farmers being paid to not grow crops, thus minimizing divergence of Colorado River water that would otherwise be used to irrigate those lands. Landowners would be paid $750 per acre of fallowed land with a maximum of 18 percent of their holdings allowed to lie untilled. Nearly three dozen farmland owners in the Yuma area are already short-term fallowing some 1,500 acres of alfalfa fields and citrus groves.
“Cropland fallowing is neither new nor uncommon in the agricultural world,” says the University of Arizona’s Water Resources Research Center. “Supporters say farmers benefit from a guaranteed paycheck while allowing soil regeneration in fallowed fields. Critics argue that fallowing negatively impacts local agriculture-based economies. Over the last decade, fallowing agreements have become popular across the West as a strategy for adjusting to decreasing water supplies in stressed river basins.”
Tribal water rights are intertwined with the Law of the River, noted authors Amy and Daniel Cordalis, writing in the Arizona Journal of Environmental Law in April.
“For thousands of years before the Law, American Indians lived and irrigated within the Colorado River Basin, making due with seasonal rains and difficult growing conditions,” they said. “Today, in a cruel—but all too common—twist, 12 of the basin’s 28 tribes have not had their water rights completely quantified, leaving many of the basin’s oldest inhabitants without a legally secure source of water.”
Twenty conservation proposals have been received so far in the Leave It In The Lake project, with grants to be announced in early September.
“I can’t tell you which tribes submitted proposals, but I can say we’re close to finalizing an agreement with one of them—an Arizona tribe from the Lower Basin—and that’s all I can say at this point,” commented Rose Davis, spokesperson for Reclamation’s Lower Colorado Region.
Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2015/08/31/drought-stricken-lake-mead-getsboost-preservation-program-161432
8. Sustainability and Healthy Communities Seminar: EPA Tribal Webinar Series Kickoff
This seminar will be conducted via a web conference and audio link. Instructions for accessing the web conference are provided in this announcement.
Please register for this seminar at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/us-epa-september-2015-tribal-webinarseries-kickoff-tickets-18102550215
U.S. EPA Sustainable and Healthy Communities (SHC) Seminar Series Proudly Presents:
Darrell Winner
Senior Science Advisor
National Center for Environmental Research
U.S. EPA Office of Research and Development
Cynthia McOliver
Project Officer/Task Lead
National Center for Environmental Research
U.S. EPA Office of Research and Development
Clint Carroll
Assistant Professor
University of Colorado-Boulder
Department of Ethnic Studies
EPA Tribal Science Webinar Series Kickoff: Discussions on Research, Traditional Knowledge and Community Health
Hosted by the National Center for Environmental Research and the Office of Science Policy
Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2015 from 3:00 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. EDT
The webinar series will develop a forum for discussion of the complex environmental issues facing many tribal and indigenous communities, by featuring a wide variety of expert guest speakers, from government, academic institutions and other organizations. The topic for the October 2015 Tribal Science Webinar is Native Science and Environmental Health: Discussions on Research, Traditional Knowledge and Community Health.
To Access the Web Conference:
Please register for this seminar at: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/us-epa-september-2015-tribal-webinarseries-kickoff-tickets-18102550215
Please Note:
Audio from the conference line will be broadcast both by telephone and by computer via Adobe Connect. If you plan to participate by phone, please mute your computer speakers prior to the seminar to avoid feedback. Please contact Greg Grissom grissom.greg@epa.gov to obtain the needed files.
